Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea-a closed world of increasing global importance-hailed as a "tour de force of meticulous reporting" (The New York Review of Books)

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST

In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years-a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today-an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.

Praise for Nothing to Envy

"Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author's deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details."-The New York Times

"Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail."-The Wall Street Journal

"A tour de force of meticulous reporting."-The New York Review of Books

"Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad."-San Francisco Chronicle

"The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction."-John Delury, Slate

"At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology."-The Philadelphia Inquirer

Editorial Reviews

"The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Los Angeles Times correspondent Barbara Demick's Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. . . . Elegantly structured and written, Nothing To Envy is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction."–Slate

"Excellent . . . lovely work of narrative nonfiction . . . a book that offers extensive evidence of the author's deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details."–New York Times

"A deeply moving book."–Wall Street Journal

"Superbly reported account of life in North Korea.''–Bloomberg

"There's a simple way to determine how well a journalist has reported a story, internalized the details, seized control of the narrative and produced good work. When you read the result, you forget the journalist is there. Barbara Demick, the Los Angeles Times' Beijing bureau chief, has aced that test in "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea," a clear-eyed and deeply reported look at one of the world's most dismal places.''–Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The ring of authority as well as the suspense of a novel.''–Washington Times

"Excellent new book is one of only a few that have made full use of the testimony of North Korean refugees and defectors. A delightful, easy-to-read work of literary nonfiction, it humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad that North Koreans are often compared to robots. . . . The tale of the star-crossed lovers, Jun-sang and Mi-ran, is so charming as to have inspired reports that Hollywood might be interested."-San Francisco Chronicle

"In a stunning work of investigation, Barbara Demick removes North Korea's mask to reveal what lies beneath its media censorship and repressive dictatorship."–Daily Beast

"In spite of the strict restrictions on foreign press, awardwinning journalist Demick caught telling glimpses of just how surreal and mournful life is in North Korea. . . . Strongly written and gracefully structured, Demick's potent blend of personal narratives and piercing journalism vividly and evocatively portrays courageous individuals and a tyrannized state."-Booklist

"These are the stories you'll never hear from North Korea's state news agency."–New York Post

"At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology. Demick . . . takes us inside the minds of her subjects, rendering them as complex, often compelling characters-not the brainwashed parodies we see marching in unison in TV reports."–...

Readers Top Reviews

Pauline Butcher Bird

I am pleased I read this book which is neither fiction nor non-fiction but faction. We get interviews of several people who defected from North Korea to South Korea and the author fills in their back stories in a novelistic style. I learned that Korea was occupied by Japan for 35 years until the end of the Second World War when America and Russia, in their wisdom drew a line across the middle and separated North Korea from the South, a folly that was to lead to the Korean war. In 1948, Kim Il-Sung was imposed by Stalin as the supreme Communist leader of N. Korea and oversaw the invasion of the South. We learn how after the war ended, N. Korea's economy surpassed that of its southern rival but from the 1980s it all went sour, electricity was turned off, factories closed, and over time, in the provinces, people starved to death. We follow four characters through to their escape and defection to South Korea. This is an easy way to get a foothold into North Korean history. I now want to read more about the impact of the Japanese occupation and more details about the cause of North Korea's subsequent economic decline.

Sara Paine

This book is not an easy read, but it is a fascinating insight into the lives of six North Korean defectors (unrelated, but all living in Chongjin) written by an American journalist Barbara Demick who has interviewed them and who kept in touch with them at regular intervals in South Korea to see how they’re getting on. The author has spoken to hundreds of North Koreans in the course of her career, but chose these particular individuals because she thought they would be more representative than people living in the capital Pyongyang. The first two thirds of the book describes their lives in North Korea (DPRK) and the last third describes how they escaped and their new lives in the south. First hand reports about N Korea are extremely had to come by, and while newsreader Ri Chun-Hee has become something of a celebrity in the west for her impressive declamatory style – she actually says next to nothing. So hearing from real people who can speak freely for the first time in their lives is fascinating. The overwhelming feeling at the end is that North Koreans must be amazingly resilient, resourceful and adaptable to keep going, despite living, as they do, in such dire circumstances. Life has always been hard in the North, but the famine of the 1990s killed at least one million people – around 4% of the population - and whole families were wiped out. An ill-advised policy of self-sufficiency (juche), propped up by energy supplies and chemical fertilisers from the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s with the demise of the USSR. leaving the DPRK isolated and frozen in time. In the chaos that followed, it was common for older generations to save their only food for their children who survived, but who were left parentless and with stunted growth. These young children are known as ‘wandering swallows’ (kotjebi) because they are constantly on the move looking for food and shelter. Following the misery of the early chapters – people having to walk for hours into the countryside to forage for grass and tree bark to eat - you think that at last there is light at the end of the tunnel when they risk everything to escape, but unfortunately their lives in South Korea are not always ones of undiluted joy either. Some adapt better than others, but they all find it hard to adjust to consumerist South Korean society in different ways. It’s overwhelming to be faced with so many choices when you are used to a government deciding everything for you. Some feel guilty about the family they have left behind, some of whom have been locked up in labour camps as a result of their relative’s defection, and some even feel a certain amount of nostalgia – they miss the sense of community that exists in the north because everyone was in the same boat – equally starved and poor. Some feel angry and defensive when their country is criticised by...

Lindosland

'We are a shrimp among whales'. That is how Koreans have described themselves and for me it sums up the dilemma of Korea, a little country that existed for a thousand years and more in much the same way as China, but then became a pawn in other's games. Did you know that the dropping of those nuclear bombs on Japan freed Koreans from 25yrs of occupation by the Japanese? I didn't. As a boy I would hear about the 'Korean war', but it meant absolutely nothing to me. I was surprised to learn that 3M Koreans died as the US fought to make this little country an outpost of the West and stop it becoming communist like it's neighbours Russia and China before reaching a stalemate and dividing the country in two. How strange it is, and what an amazing experiment, that all our most prized electronic possessions - from flat screen TV's to laptops and mobiles - come from South Korea, made by people with the same history and genetic makeup as those in the North with such a different way of life! I'm so glad I found this book. It's a gripping read. But it's important to remember that it's author bases it on the stories of defectors who 'escaped' from N Korea. We come to understand their backgrounds and their reasons, but not all Koreans want to escape (as the book also points out), and those who do are left with fond memories of their life in a place where the stars shine brightly in an unpolluted sky with no light pollution (no streetlights). Where, if you accept the system, there are a great many less things to worry about than we are used to. The defectors have their own grudges based on their individual backgrounds, but are they proof that the regime is all bad? There's something wrong with the story we are given; some things that don't 'add up'. During the terrible famine of the 1990's it's shear lack of food that is the underlying problem. Then, when things start to pick up, we are given a heart-warming story of how everyone sets up as an entrepreneur, cooking biscuits, gathering firewood, cutting hair and so on, and it is the stirrings of small-scale capitalism that save the day. But cooking biscuits does nothing to increase the food value of the basic ingredients - no amount of work and cooperation can help people get out of a famine; the basic problem is simply lack of food. Some entrepreneurs start growing vegetables by creating terraced gardens, but how come they didn't do this sooner? We have been told that N Korea was not always struggling. In the early years after the country was divided it was N Korea that had the best standard of living, and S Korea struggled - until the explosion of the consumer electronics industry there. What actually caused N Korea's famine was not communism, or mismanagement, but a series of quite exceptional droughts and floods that damaged the crops; with little external aid. What rescued th...

S. Warfield

This is the best book about North Korean daily life that I have read so far, especially for the years during the North Korean famine. Author and journalist Barbara Demick details the lives of several ordinary citizens and tells of their daily struggles to find food and the ways in which they worked so hard to keep their families and themselves alive. There are sad stories in this book, but it is also a tribute to these people who have shown the power of the will to live and to see their children live. Through the life stories of these citizens, the author has gone through what they had to do individually and as a group or family in order to survive. One woman in particular, Mrs. Song, who was the perfect North Korean citizen, was very industrious and resourceful in finding ways to make a little bit of money at a time in order to buy food for the next meal for her family. But she, along with many other North Koreans, went against what the government wanted and set up their own little individual businesses which might have been a tarp on the ground with biscuits for sale. After a while, these little "black market" enterprises made enough money for the people setting them up that they were able to buy more food than they had before, and provided a bit of food for the hungry to buy if they had any to spend at all. American and other foreign aid in the form of grains, powdered milk and other food goods was sent in huge supplies to North Korea, but a lot of it never got to the people, but wound up being sold on the black market. While his people died of starvation, Kim Jong Il spent millions on food for himself from all over the world that was luxurious and exotic. This is the way of despots and dictators in repressed societies where, like in this one, the slogan was "Let's Eat Two Meals a Day" when most were lucky to eat grass boiled in water. But things get to a certain point when the people who are hard line believers in their government begin to realize that they have been lied to their entire lives. Many of these people defect or make the effort to defect from a northernmost city like Chongjin into China and either into Mongolia and on to South Korea or to Southeast Asia to make their way to a destination where they will be free. Through these lengthy interviews with the people in the book, the author has given us a realistic and thoughtful look at North Korea. If you read nothing else on the subject, I recommend that you read this.

Ana

When Kim Jung-il died, I remember seeing a photo of a young woman dressed in black and sobbing. I though, “Why is she crying? I’d be opening a bottle of wine to celebrate!” But I’m an American, I have no idea what it’s like to be afraid to criticize politicians. In truth, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t lived under the Kims could know how disparaging it is. It’s ‘1984’ come true in all the worst ways. The news covers a regime, a country and the mad man who runs it. We hear of nuke testing, missle launches and sancuntions. But we don’t hear about the mothers trying to care for their families, the homeless, starving children or the men who are forced to work for no pay. This book is an eye opener. It focusing on those who really matter and it’s not the Kims, it’s the people who are trapped in his hell. At the end of the day, I get to put down the book and return to my life. There is nothing that can be done to reach those who are suffering. But I’d like to think that just knowing that they are suffering helps in some small way. I am certainly more grateful for everything in my life.

Short Excerpt Teaser

Chapter One

If you look at satellite photographs of the far east by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Next to this mysterious black hole, South Korea, Japan, and now China fairly gleam with prosperity. Even from hundreds of miles above, the billboards, the headlights and streetlights, the neon of the fast- food chains appear as tiny white dots signifying people going about their business as twenty-first-century energy consumers. Then, in the middle of it all, an expanse of blackness nearly as large as England. It is baffling how a nation of 23 million people can appear as vacant as the oceans. North Korea is simply a blank.

North Korea faded to black in the early 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had propped up its old Communist ally with cheap fuel oil, North Korea's creakily inefficient economy collapsed. Power stations rusted into ruin. The lights went out. Hungry people scaled utility poles to pilfer bits of copper wire to swap for food. When the sun drops low in the sky, the landscape fades to gray and the squat little houses are swallowed up by the night. Entire villages vanish into the dusk. Even in parts of the showcase capital of Pyongyang, you can stroll down the middle of a main street at night without being able to see the buildings on either side.

When outsiders stare into the void that is today's North Korea, they think of remote villages of Africa or Southeast Asia where the civilizing hand of electricity has not yet reached. But North Korea is not an undeveloped country; it is a country that has fallen out of the developed world. You can see the evidence of what once was and what has been lost dangling overhead alongside any major North Korean road-the skeletal wires of the rusted electrical grid that once covered the entire country.

North Koreans beyond middle age remember well when they had more electricity (and for that matter food) than their pro-American cousins in South Korea, and that compounds the indignity of spending their nights sitting in the dark. Back in the 1990s, the U.S. offered to help North Korea with its energy needs if it gave up its nuclear weapons program. But the deal fell apart after the Bush administration accused the North Koreans of reneging on their promises. North Koreans complain bitterly about the darkness, which they still blame on the U.S. sanctions. They can't read at night. They can't watch television. "We have no culture without electricity," a burly North Korean security guard once told me accusingly

But the dark has advantages of its own. Especially if you are a teenager dating somebody you can't be seen with.

When adults go to bed, sometimes as early as 7:00 p.m. in winter, it is easy enough to slip out of the house. The darkness confers measures of privacy and freedom as hard to come by in North Korea as electricity. Wrapped in a magic cloak of invisibility, you can do what you like without worrying about the prying eyes of parents, neighbors, or secret police.

I met many North Koreans who told me how much they learned to love the darkness, but it was the story of one teenage girl and her boyfriend that impressed me most. She was twelve years old when she met a young man three years older from a neighboring town. Her family was low-ranking in the byzantine system of social controls in place in North Korea. To be seen in public together would damage the boy's career prospects as well as her reputation as a virtuous young woman. So their dates consisted entirely of long walks in the dark. There was nothing else to do anyway; by the time they started dating in earnest in the early 1990s, none of the restaurants or cinemas were operating because of the lack of power.

They would meet after dinner. The girl had instructed her boyfriend not to knock on the front door and risk questions from her older sisters, younger brother, or the nosy neighbors. They lived squeezed together in a long, narrow building behind which was a common outhouse shared by a dozen families. The houses were set off from the street by a white wall, just above eye level in height. The boy found a spot behind the wall where nobody would notice him as the light seeped out of the day. The clatter of the neighbors washing the dishes or using the toilet masked the sound of his footsteps. He would wait hours for her, maybe two or three. It didn't matter. The cadence of life is slower in North Korea. Nobody owned a watch.

The girl would emerge just as soon as she could extricate herself from the family. Stepping outside, she would peer into the darkness, unable to see him at first but sensing with certainty his presence. She wouldn't bother wi...

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

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